Aha, but these are the obvious things … my eyes go to the flowers and what is on the scale … i think that’s the story behind. 🙂

Kim, look at the god-form closer … is that an ibis head maybe .. cause sethian form has squared ears and a long, down-turned snout, a canine body with a tail. It’s the god of destruction, turmoil, illness … i’m not sure that would be allowed with that temper to do the weighing 😉 … though he did like the company of fair Isis .. but his main thing is to cause chaos (he has put him beneath you so that he can lift you up. He will groan beneath you as an earthquake … – Pyramid Texts, Spell 356) .. the flower is, I think, the white lily, which has great alchemical significance .. nymphea flower that Egyptians used in ceremony rites..

Kim

Of course, but my experience tells me that it’s better to start with the simple, partly because you get some success in the start, partly because the rest become smaller each time 🙂

It’s difficult to see what’s in the scales, but a cobra in the left, an urn in the right? and why?

Maat was both the goddess and the personification of truth and justice. Her ostrich feather represents truth.

Maya

Yes looks to me like that, instead of a Maats feather a white cobra like figure .. hard to see yes, on the other side, maybe a scarabeo in red representing the heart, cause it had that representation in the funerary ceremony rites, Isis and god-advocate .. that speaks for the person. why? – ha, to tell you the truth I think i never answered any question that started with why 😉

Kim

Maats feather sounds perfectly right to me, even managed the why. I didn’t know about Maat feathers! Wiki: “the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice.” And the heart sounds also perfectly right.
Justice without Compassion is unjust.
I think the whys are pretty interesting; why do people say and do what they do.

I see how it can be mistaken for Seth easily, cause has the same crux ansata as Seth in the hand, while Thoth is usually depicted with a scroll.

Kim

Has Thoth anything common with Scorpio?
Isis is familiar to Virgo, so on one side we have Virgo and on the other side we have Scorpio. Seth is more like Capricorn.

Maya

I’m not sure with that actually, that’s your lore.

Kim

It states that he became associated with “the judgment of the dead” and that is a Scorpio thing: if the heart is sick, take it out.
Two star signs following each other are their direct opposites, Virgo is the opposite of Libra, and Libra is the opposite of Scorpio, but that don’t make Virgo and Scorpio the same, the sting are different.

Steiner mentions something about the sphinx’s stands for man’s four lowest sheath or bodies, what we have with us down to Earth.
The sphinx to the right is feminine I think, also in blue.

Maya

Silver! :))

Kim

I am gone a little dead now, but we still have a lot of details in the lower part we have to understand and integrate, but otherwise a nice job until now 🙂

The lily then represents Sophia, Mary or Isis, above we have the Rosicrucian Rose representing the Son, Horus and Jesus.
So the mother contains the lower part where the Son contains the upper part. The physical (sphinx=phys, ether, astral, soul) and the spiritual world.
Glass square = physical world.
Circle containing a Seven star containing the scales? Seven planets signifying the planetary powers within the Zodiac.

Maya

You made a great analysis, glass square seems physical world yes, inside of which is a star with seven points (planets, metals-chakras) so reminds me of square-circle combination in Vitruvi’s microcosm macrocosm .. so with that analogy glass square may be representing a man, that has inside of him the little universe resembling the big .. And from which a rose springs and blooms.

Kim

Yes, beautiful, the circle are a micro-zodiac and the star, the seven planets or chakras, together the microcosm, in the cube which are the physical man.
And the rose springs and blooms in the spiritual world.
The two sphinx’ are the powers which manifest in the physical world who Steiner calls Lucifer and Ahriman.
What about the two hands?

Maya

I’ve just been thinking most of the morning how the glass cube is very genius, and, has its own story with layers .. and how very sentient, human .. it is .. and intimately how can this human side of the pic be even sad. I get the feeling that all the other parts of the pic, except the lily, cube, and the rose are pure form satisfied .. but not that part. It is because of the nature of the glass, and that is a genius part. Glass when well polished regularly, gives a beautiful picture of the world, like a man who tends good for his soul, character, all … but when not, when it is unclean, you can’t see what is outside of the cube, and sort of becomes only thing we know -like man that leads very worldly life plagued with all negative sides of it..and it brings ignorance, and also,the sad part-cube becomes sort of prison, hopeless. So that is from perspective of a man inside the cube .. but window is seen through from both sides, and this view has to do how light comes in to the cube .. so it can only if polished .. and cube is sort of prism that breaks the light in many colours of the rainbow, seven mostly, so this forms a man, and gives light to the growing of the Rose. And that is the manifold creation. But this too has a sad side … and that is this, even with perfectly clean cube and light beautifully coming in, and things outside the cube visible, still the glass visible as it is, is the separator of Man and Cosmos, and its like attached,and influencing but not reachable from the state of being inside and polishing good, except but the rose, rose grows from it, and its only thing that connects humanity with the architecture of the universe. Thank you for clarifying this to me, and that you noticed the glass cube.
To just look at these picture is nice, and one can say they are beautiful then, but that’s just souls recognition automatic of whats beautiful, symmetry and colours .. but I think they should be deciphered, observed well, really so many suggestions in them, underlying structure beyond mere looking.

Kim

Yes, they are fantastic, especially the rose symbolics as the only way out of the box, but it is as you say somewhat depressing, life is not simple. I hope we will see many roses flower in the coming years, though.
But there is something missing, the female mystery, as some calls it, what Douno hints at, another kind of joy and meaningfulness which is not signified in the picture.
I have also thought a little about the floor in the physical plane, the chess board they are standing on could signify the rigid rule of karma, and the glass box is a chess piece which is moved around by Lucifer and Ahriman.
What does the two hands with the fire refer to? The scale is also a cross and the top of the cross is a hand with a finger-pointing up, as we see John the Baptist in Raphael’s paintings.

Maya

I like the chess explanation of rule of karma! Very deep instead of the usual explanation of the masons, how it represents the architecture and geometry of the universe, and how world is lined with parallels and meridians, the order of GAOTU … but the chess game is more reasonable .. But whose hands?

Kim

Beautiful, I didn’t know, I haven’t used much time on the masons, but they are also right, Karma is the building block’s of the physical universe, that’s why it’s called maya, no pun intended 🙂

Maya

haha … You had to draw that from the pocket ha?

Kim

Yes, it was too difficult to resist 🙂
Above the yin/yang sign are what I think is two hands, looking a little like a flower, up from the hands stream a fire changing over into the cross.

Maya

I think it’s not the hands of the Prime Mover, but representing energy-thought-fire moving of individual as participant of divine fire, alchemist. I noticed that there aren’t depictions of God just architecture, and twofold energies in the set of the paintings. So I think it’s the Great Work symbol, on which depends the scale in the end, is it in equilibrium, and is the heart light as the feather. But thats just my impression

Kim

You just lost me a second 🙂
But, if it’s the great work symbol it’s logical to call the flame for the kundalini power. But where does the hands come from? Something with the Earth?

Maya

Hm … i’m not sure … but you are nudging me again .. I got an idea .. count the symbols from below to the sky ending with Sol+Luna, or chymical wedding .. so its Fleur de Lys, cube with the star, rose, yin and yang as equilibrium (neutral), then the hands, then the cross of the scale with what seems to be rose in the cross, and ending with Sol and Luna betwixt.

Kim

Arh, couldn’t you have given the sum 😉 each time I count I find a new way and reaches a new number.
But it looks a little like the Tree of Life, but I only reaches nine.

Maya

Hahaha … The sum – never! I can count 7 .. so I thought could be connected with practical alchemy more … but yes you can count it like that too ..

Kim

I reached 8 when I counted your list.
That I reached 9 was because I missed Kether, but it’s the lying 8 symbol, infinity, so it’s ten now.
The only problem is that we see the Kabbalah tree from the back:)

Maya

🙂 great .. Ill get the mirror, you hold the picture … Remember how Temperance was alluding to the right pillar on gemini picture … I wouldn’t be surprised if things looked inverted either..

Eva and Adam

Kim

The gemini picture was ok in all aspects, it was also the reason I had the problems with Libra, why was the Father to the left and the Mother to the right?
If you look at old Adam and Eva figures and paintings, Adam were nearly always to the right, but more modern paintings have moved him to the left. Maja Hm, i think up to now we got fragments just with this one, i’ve been thinking about the story, the fire cleared it a bit. Ill try to write it in a bit.

Maya

Ok, a bit of stepping from Christian or egyptian or any other religious concept. Back to alchemic basics. Alchemy is trait of fermenting the vital Spirit in and by its own Light – that’s universal and individual. We see on picture regions, celestial, terrestrial and sort of interior underground. Celestial is I think represented by plants-emotional, receptive-in a man a heart region (ok again, rose flower, Christ and all that), terrestrial-sensual represented by animal forms sphinx (half animal half human) – domination in mans body is the head, and thus why maybe the sphinx-symbol of intellectualism, correct answers (the tale of Oedipus and the question ).
Last sphere, underground I think its the glass cube, i thought of prisms – but glass isn’t only prism, its diamond too-thus mineral, in human body its lumbal region. The aim of Alchemy is to reverse the action in their order.
Aha yes, its the same thing I thought but forgot to tell you about, Gichtels picture, it’s not to follow the orbiting its to reverse it. So the fire of natural life entering into fermenting opens, developed and sets free celestial Light.
About the hands and light hermeticism or better say alchemy, is the magnetism of Light-thought to be the emanating spirit of Wisdom , Soph. So to understand the nature respecting that first cause man asks questions, as an extortion of Sphinx like forms of the true answer. About the white proliferation in the below of the picture i think it depicts the vegetable spirit – which is growth-causing. So we have pic of human vital spirit that has to be purified, weighed in order to be regenerated white flower (regeneration, in Egypt, while the blue is enlightenment. But we got it well all and cube too, a cage, prison, entrapped in the mineral – which also means the divine light is somewhat penetrating but hidden from it. Bah, I need a thought to finish it.

Kim

Maya, it was too many ball’s in one, I didn’t catch a single one, constipation I think 🙂

By the way, which of the alchemy book’s do you recommend, when it should be clear and concise and all in all readable.

No, I caught one, the rose in the middle of the Cross, I hadn’t seen it.

Maya

Me too … sort of picture had fallen behind, became blurred … and i’ve seen a beautiful one i’m thinking of and enjoying for 2 days now … this Libra picture is left in some corner of my head just .. if you get new ideas about it please enlighten me ..

Kim

I think we to a great extend have solved it.

Sun is Lucifer or Yang and the Moon is Ahriman or Yin, and they are in equilibrium.
Everything is build around the trinity, even the weight have a cross in the middle.

Esoteric Aspects of the Isis figure

The following texts relates the Isis figure to the Soul. The three Mothers of the soul, as described in “Isis and Madonna” are the Sentient soul (Orektikon), the Intellectual soul (Kinetikon), and the Consciousness soul (Dianoetikon) as seen here.

… Therefore in the true sense of spiritual science we do not speak only of one Mother but of the Mothers, realizing that what we have today as the physical Mother is the last development of the soul-spiritual figure out of the spiritual realm. There are in fact images of Isis representing not one Mother but Mothers, three Mothers. In front we have a figure, Isis with the Horus child at her breast, resembling the oldest representations of the Madonna. But behind this figure in certain Egyptian representations we have another figure, an Isis, bearing on her head the two familiar cow horns and the wings of the hawk, offering the “Crux Ansata”☥ (Ankh) to the child. We see that what is physical, human, in the foremost figure is here more spiritualized. Behind there is yet a third figure, bearing a lion’s head and representing the third stage of the human soul. This is how these three Isis figures appear, one behind the other. It is an actual fact that our human soul bears in it three natures — a willnature, found in the inmost depths of the being, a feelingnature and a wisdomnature. These are the three soul Mothers; we meet them in the three figures of the Egyptian Isis.

Isis:

“I am the All; I am the Past, the Present and the Future. My Veil has no Mortal ever lifted.”

Or

“I AM, which is, and which was, and which is to come my veil no mortal can raise.”

The soul was always known as the “mother” in all esoteric (mystical) teachings; the instructor was the “father.” Father and mother, Osiris and Isis, those are the two forces present in the soul: the instructor, representing the divine which flows directly into man, Osiris, he that is the father; the soul itself, Isis, the one who conceives, receives the divine, the spiritual into itself, she is the mother. During the fifth Root Race the father withdraws. The soul is widowed. Humanity is thrown back onto itself. It must find the light of truth within its own soul in order to act as its own guide. Everything of a soul nature has always been expressed in terms of the feminine. Therefore the feminine element—which exists only in a germinal state today and will later be fully developed—this self-directing feminine principle which is no longer confronted by the divine fructifier, is called by Mani the “Widow.” And therefore he calls himself “Son of the Widow.”

But the Isis legend must show itself as being fulfilled in another way in our time. We cannot lose the Christ and what he, in a higher form than Osiris, gives us; but we can lose, and we have lost, what is portrayed for our Christian understanding standing at the side of Osiris — Isis — the mother of the Saviour, the divine wisdom, Sophia. If the Isis legend is to be renewed, then it must not simply follow the old form
…
Oh, the soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it feels committed to experience the new Isis legend within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and then places her body into the infinity of space, which has become the grave of Isis, a mathematical abstraction. Then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery, made possible through the inner force of spiritual knowledge.
…
Just as the Egyptians looked from Osiris to Isis, so we must learn to look again to the new Isis, the holy Sophia. Christ will appear again in his spiritual form during the course of the twentieth century, not through the arrival of external events alone, but because human beings find the power represented by the holy Sophia. The modern age has had the tendency to lose this power of Isis, this power of Mary. It has been killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of humankind. And the confessions have in part exterminated just this view of Mary.

Isis, when she is purified and has laid aside all that she has received from the physical, is impregnated from the spiritual world and gives birth to Horus, the higher man, who is to be victorious over the lower human being. Thus we see Isis as the representative of the human soul, as that in us which as the divine spiritual is born of the universal Father and has remained within us, seeking Osiris and only finding him through initiation or death. By conjuring this Osiris and Isis saga in a picture before our soul we are looking into the realm that lies behind the physical world of the senses, into a time when man was still among the Mothers, the primordial grounds of existence, when Isis was not yet enclosed in the physical body but still united in the golden age with her spouse Osiris.

Why does the Kabbalah Tree of Life look as it does,
and has it always looked that way?

In the Rosicrusian Cross I had a picture of the Kabbalah Sephirots as they are placed today:

Kabbalah Sephirots as they are placed today.

It’s usually thought that it has looked like this since the day man was created many planetary cycles (aeons) ago. But, as God emanates down through his creations, his emanations three aspects (Son, Mother, and Father), ascends up through the Sephirots leading their creations up, and the placements of the Sephirots changes therefore on the pillars, after which aspect occupies a given Sephira. That is, Sephirots with the Mother aspect are placed on the Left Pillar, Sephirots with the Son aspect are placed on the Middle Pillar, and Sephirots with the Father aspect are placed on the Right Pillar.

A complicated example, which also explains the background for Daat:

Binah, Chokmah, and Kether are placed the way they are because Binah contains The Mother, the Creator of Man (Thrones.) The Creator has to be just above the Abyss, as she is above any of our spiritual bodies. The Mother should have been in Chokmah which is a feminine Sephira, and Binah should have contained the Son, and Kether should have contained The Father aspect.

While The Mother is in Binah, The Son is hidden in one of the other Sephirots, so there is missing a Son-Sephira below Kether, where Binah in reality should have been placed, and where the knowledgeable have placed an imaginary Sephira called Daat instead, symbolizing the hidden Son.

Short after the time of Christ (The Second Adam) with Elohim, The Father or Osiris, The Mother or Shekinah/Sophia/Isis, and The Son or Horus/Anthropos:

We come from here to the Kabbalah of today by shifting the Æon’s one up, the Mother/Elohim moved from Tiphareth to Geburah, thereby Geburah was placed in the Left Pillar and Tiphareth moved from the Left Pillar to the Center Pillar, as the Son moved into Tiphareth, and so forth.

It is interesting to see the Heavenly, and Earthly triangles with the emanation of the Son as Man. These two triangles overlaid makes the Hexagram:

The Elements

YHVE are the letters for the Sephirots in the Third Hierarchy, Microcosm. Yod is Air, Heh is Fire, Vav is Water, and the last Heh is Earth. After the emanation of the Son, that is, today, the Elements has moved according to the Pillars. If we use the YHVE letters, Yod is fire, Heh is Water, Vav is Air, and the second Heh is still Earth. The reason are that the Right Pillar is Fire, the Left Pillar is Water, and the Center Pillar is Air, and Malkuth is always Earth.

Emanation of the new Æon

It is claimed that at the beginning of certain historical periods — when old religious truths are about to be forgotten, and the idolatry of form assumes the place of true religion — some great spirit (planetary) appears upon the earth, incarnated into a human form, and by his word and example impresses the old truths forcibly upon a number of receptive minds, to communicate to others, and thus lay the foundation of a new religious system, embodying old truths in a new form.

It is believed that the man Jesus of Nazareth was the mortal form in which such a spirit was embodied; the latter being no less than what I believe every planetary spirit to be — an emanation from the Universal Logos or Word.